The move makes YouTube look more and more like a Time/Warner Cable service than its roots as an eclectic online video site.

What is interesting here, from the point of view of content creators, is that YouTube is prepared to spend even more money underwriting new independent productions and their sudden discovery that you can actually make content faster and cheaper than traditional television networks do.

"What we found amazing about the opportunity was to go from ideation to production and having content in front of our fan base in a ridiculously short amount of time, and content that's produced at television-level quality," said Peter Levin, chief executive of multimedia company Nerdist Industries.

Really Peter? What a discovery!

Of course, all you have to do is read iPhone Millionaire: Six Weeks to Change Your Life, or join Nyvs.com, the online film school.

Of course, in my humble opinion, the last thing the world needs is yet another 50 channels. Aren't there enough channels already that basically have nothing on them? In New York I have about 2,000 channels on my Time/Warner system that seem to show an endless supply of pointless and unwatchable pap.

What we need now is not more channels but a complete re-think about how content for television is made and, importantly, who makes it.

In the same New York Times article one of the "new" production companies YouTube is touting is Revision3, owned by Discovery Communications.

They already know how to make TV the old way. And they already have like a dozen cable channels they could improve (see Military Channel, Discovery Health, Planet Green and a few others) – without adding any more.

No, the answer here is not "more channels" but better ones, with more creative quality and far lower cost. So pick up your iPhone (and send that email to YouTube).